{273}
_Hsiung Hsi Ling, Premier of China--Preparations for a call--A cart
of State--An elderly mule--Waiting in the gate--The yam en--Mr Wu, the
secretary--“Hallo, Missus!”--The power of a Chinese General--“Plenty
robber, too much war”--Ceremonial farewell--A cultivated gentleman--Back
to past ages for the night._
|Up in Jehol they called the General commanding the three thousand odd
troops the Tartar General, why I do not know, but it seems it is the
title by which he is commonly known among the country people. He was
Hsiung Hsi Ling, the man who is now Premier of China, and to him I
brought letters of introduction so that I might be admitted to the
Imperial Palace and Park and be treated as a person of consequence,
otherwise I imagine a foreigner and a woman at that would have but small
chance of respect in China. The Chinese letters lifted me to the rank of
the literati, which must have been rather surprising to the Chinese, and
these in English were such that I felt I must bear myself so as to live
up to them.
The yamen was about five minutes' walk from the mission station, and
in my ignorance I had thought I would stroll up some morning when I
had recovered from the fatigues of the journey, but the missionaries,
{274}steeped in the lore of Chinese etiquette, declared such a
proceeding was not suitable. A person of consequence, such as my letters
proclaimed me, must bear herself more becomingly.
“Write and ask if ten o'clock on Tuesday morning will be a suitable time
for you to call on the General, and send your letters by your servant.
I dare say there will be somebody who can read them, though I am sure
there will be nobody who can write an answer,” said the missionary. “The
General's English-speaking secretary is away.”
Accordingly I sent off Tuan, who was more than sure that he was equal
to the task, and he returned without a letter, as the missionary had
prophesied, but saying: “She say all right.”
“And now you must have a cart,” said that missionary who was more
worldly wise than I expected an enthusiast to be, “and don't get down
till the yamen gates are opened. It would never do to wait with the
servants in the gate.”
How Eastern it sounded! And then his wife came and superintended my
toilet. The weather was warm, not to say hot, and I had thought a
black and white muslin a most fitting and suitable array. But she was
horrified at the effect. It was made in the mode of 1913, and did not
suggest, as the long Manchu robes do, that I was built like a pyramid,
broadest at the base.
“Haven't you got a coat to put over you,” said she looking round, and
she seized my burberry which was the only thing in the shape of a wrap
I had with me. Chinese ideas of propriety evidently influenced her very
strongly.
I declined to wear a burberry on a hot day late in {275}May, though all
the Chinese Empire were shocked and horrified at my impropriety, but I
sought round and found a lace veil which, draped over me, was a
little suggestive of a bridal festivity, but apparently satisfied all
conditions, and then I went out to mount into that abomination--a Peking
cart. The Peking cart that is used for visiting has a little trestle
carried over the back end of the shafts, which is taken down when the
occupant wishes to mount and dismount, so I got into the seat of honour,
the most uncomfortable seat well under the tilt, and Tuan, glorious in
a long black silk brocade robe, his queue newly oiled and plaited, and
a big straw hat upon his head, climbed on to the tail of the shaft, and
the carter, dressed in the ordinary blue of his class, with the ordinary
rag over his head to keep off the dust, walked beside the most venerable
white mule I have ever come across. I don't know whether aged animals
are held in respect in China, I'm afraid not. The poor old thing had
great deep hollows over his eyes. I suspect Tuan had got him cheap,
because the cart was respectable, and he had been good once--of course
he would never have let me lose face--and then he made me pay full
price, a whole fivepence I think it came to.
“That's a very old mule, Tuan,” I said.
“Yes,” he assented, “very old, she forty,” which was certainly more
than I had reckoned him. I afterwards came to the conclusion he meant
fourteen.
What Tuan was there for, I certainly don't know, except to carry my
card-case, which I was perfectly capable of carrying myself.
We went out into the dusty, mud-coloured street, and along between
mud-coloured walls of the dullest, most uninteresting description, and
presently we arrived at the yamen gates, and here it was evident that
Tuan, who had been so important all across the mountains, was now quite
out of his depth.
“Cart no can go,” said he. “Missie get out.”
I was prepared for that. “No,” I said very important for once in my
life, “I wait till someone comes.”
The yamen entrance was divided into three, as all Chinese entrances
seem to be, and over it were curved tiled roofs with a little colouring,
faded and shabby, about them; all of it was badly in need of repair,
and on the fast-closed gates in the middle were representations of some
demon apparently in a fit, but his aspect was a little spoiled by the
want of a fresh coat of paint. The two little gates at either side were
open, and here clustered Chinese soldiers in khaki, and men in civilian
dress of blue cotton, and all stared at the foreign woman who was not
a missionary, in the cart; that is the rude ones stared, and the polite
ones looked uncomfortably out of the corners of their eyes. A Chinaman's
politeness in this respect always ends by making me uncomfortable. A
good, downright stare that says openly: “I am taking you in with all my
eyes,” I can stand, but the man who looks away and down and out of the
corners of his eyes gets on my nerves in no time.
However, this time I had not long to wait. After a minute or two out
came a messenger, a Chinese of the better class, for he was dressed in
a bright blue silk coat and petticoats, with a black sleeveless jacket
over it, and the gates at his command, to my boy's immense astonishment,
opened, and my cart rumbled into the first courtyard. We went on into
a second--bare, ugly courtyards they were, without a flower or a tree or
any green thing to rest the eye upon--and then I got down as there came
to meet me a small bare-headed man without a queue, and his thick
black hair apparently cut with a saw and done with a fork. He wore an
ill-fitting suit of foreign clothes, and about his neck, instead of a
collar, one of those knitted wraps an Englishwoman puts inside her coat
when the weather is cold. On his feet were the white socks and heelless
slippers of the Chinese. Instead of the dignified greeting the first man
had given me he remarked genially, and offhandedly: “Hallo, Missus!”
and he did it with a certain confidence, as if he really would show the
numerous bystanders that he knew how to receive a lady.
[Illustration: 0386]
[Illustration: 0387]
Through one shabby courtyard after another, all guarded by soldiers in
khaki, he led me to the presence of the Tartar General, Hsiung Hsi Ling,
the great man who had been Minister of Finance and who now held military
command over the whole of that part of China, independent even of the
Viceroy of the Province of Chihli. Those who told me made a great point
of that independence; but in China it seems that a General with troops
at his command always is independent, not only of the Viceroy of the
Province in which he is stationed, but of anyone else in authority. The
President himself would treat him with great respect so long as he had
troops at his back. He is, in fact, entirely independent. If the central
authorities give him money to pay his troops, well and good, he holds
himself at their command, if they do not, then he is quite likely
to sympathise with his men, and become not only a {278}danger to the
community among whom he is stationed, but to the Government as well. It
is hardly likely yet in China, that a General popular with his troops
can be degraded or dismissed. He can only be got rid of by offering him
something better.
Here I found none of the pomp and magnificence I had expected to find
about an all-powerful Oriental. We went into a room floored with stone,
after the Chinese fashion, and furnished with a couple of chairs, and
through that into a plain, smallish room, with the usual window of
dainty lattice-work covered with white paper. All down the centre of it
ran a table like a great dining-table, covered, as if to emphasise
the likeness, with a white cloth. I felt as if I had come in at an
inopportune moment, before the table had been cleared away. Seated at
this table, with his back to the window, was the General. He rose as I
entered and came forward, kindly and considerately, to meet me--a man
of middle height, younger than I expected, for he hardly looked forty.
There was not a thread of white in his coal-black hair, but he had
some hair on his face--a moustache and the scanty beard that is all the
Chinese can produce--so he was evidently of ripe years, well past middle
age. He wore a uniform of khaki, as simple and devoid of ornament as
that of one of his own soldiers; his thick black hair was cut short and
he had a clever, kindly face. Though he could understand no English, he
looked at the foreign woman pleasantly, and as if he were glad to see
her. He went back to his chair, and I was seated at his right hand,
while his secretary, and very inadequate interpreter, sat on his left.
An attendant, looking like an ordinary coolie, brought in tea in three
cups with handles and saucers, foreign fashion, and the interview began.
I have been told that a grave and unsmiling demeanour is the proper
thing to bring to a Chinese interview; and if so I failed lamentably
to come up to the correct standard. But since the interpreter knew even
less English than Tuan, whom I had left outside, there was really little
else to do but smile and look pleasant. My host certainly smiled many
times. I complimented him on the beauty of his country and then I asked
permission, that is to say his protection, to go on to Lamamiao, or as
it is called on the maps, Dolnor. Goodness knows why I asked. It would
have meant two or three weeks at least in that awful Peking cart, but I
appear to be so constituted that, when I am within range of a place,
it would seem like missing my opportunities not to try and get there. I
don't know what there is to see at Dolnor, but it is up on the Mongolian
plateau, and there is a big lamaserie there and a living Buddha, that
is an incarnation of the Buddha. The one who is there at present may be
very holy as to one part of him, but the earthly part requires plenty
of drink, I am told, and the caresses of many women to make this world
tolerable. However, I was not to see him. The General and his secretary
might not have understood much, but they did understand what I wanted
then, and they were emphatic that I could not go. The General looked at
his secretary and then at me, and explained at length, and he must have
thought that the English language was remarkable for its brevity, for I
was curtly informed:
“No can go. Plenty robber. Too much war.”
I had been threatened with robbers before, but not by an important
General, and this time I felt I had better take heed, besides there was
always the consolatory thought that, if I did not go, I need not ride
any more in a Peking cart. Then I asked permission to visit the Palace
and Park.
“No can do one time,” said the interpreter. “How many day you want go?”
Somehow, though I had come all this way to see it, I have a rooted
objection to sightseeing. To get a ticket to go into a place takes away
the charm; still as I was about it, I thought I would go as often as
I could, so I said I would like to go on five days. The missionaries,
though they had been here for six years, had never yet set foot inside
that Park; to go required a permit from the authorities, and it was
their idea to ask nothing from those authorities that they could
possibly avoid. They would certainly have thought it wicked to ask for
anything for their own pleasure. I did not suffer from any such ideas.
As the General was bent on being civil to me I thought I might as well
say I would like to take my friends in, and as we could not go without
proper attendants--I who come from a country where I have blacked my own
boots, cooked the family dinner, and ironed my husband's shirts many a
time--I asked for and got about thirty tickets. I've got some of them
still. Then I drank a cup of very excellent tea, and before five minutes
were up rose and made my adieux. Brevity, I had been instructed, was the
soul of courtesy in a Chinese interview.
The Tartar General saw me through two doors, which I believe was a high
honour, and due to my having been introduced as a learned doctor. The
correct thing is to protest all the while and beg your host not to come
any farther, but I am really too Western in my ideas and it seems silly.
Either he wants to come, or he doesn't, in any case what does it matter,
and so I fear me, I was not vehement enough in my protestations of
unworthiness. The secretary conducted me to my cart, where a subdued
and awed servant awaited my arrival with a new and exalted idea of his
Missie's importance. Tuan had magnified my importance, I fancy, for his
own sake. He was serving a woman--yes, but she was a rich, generous, and
important woman, but he had never, at the bottom of his heart, really
dreamt that she could go through the yamen gate in a cart, that she
could sit down beside the Tartar General, that she could get many
tickets to go inside grounds forbidden to all the Chinese round about.
I have not the slightest doubt all the details of the interview reached
him before I came out, brief as my visit had been, and he helped me
into my cart with, I felt, more deference and less make-believe than was
usual. It made me smile a little to myself, but I think it was Tuan who
really got most satisfaction out of that visit, though he had not seen
the great man.
[Illustration: 0393]
I had been comparing China to Babylon. I came away from the General's
presence with the feeling that a Babylonish gentleman was truly
charming--just like a finished product of my own time. Probably he was.
But there were other sides to Babylon, as I was reminded that night. It
is well to know all sides. When I had said good night and gone to bed,
there burst on my ears a loud beating of gongs, and the weird war-song
I had found so {282}haunting the night before. The soldiers were
stimulating their courage for the fighting in Mongolia. I wonder if the
Babylonish soldiery sang so before they marched down upon Jerusalem.
Then there came the watchman's gong, and the howl of the _wonks_ that
prowled about the town. I was back in past ages, and as I lay there
in the darkness I wondered how I had ever had the temerity even to
contemplate a visit to Lamamiao, and whether I would ever have the
courage necessary to get back to Peking by myself. Luckily the fears of
the dark are generally dispersed by the morning sunlight. At least they
are with me, or I should never dare go travelling in remote places at
all.